[URBAN NOTE] "McGuinty government backs John Tory’s revitalization plan for Ontario Place"

[rfmcdonald]

The Ontario provincial government has accepted John Tory's proposal to redevelop the declining Ontario Place recreation complex.

The province on Wednesday endorsed a plan to revamp Ontario Place with new housing units, businesses, parkland and an educational research centre.

After two decades of debate and studies on how to make the waterfront park more profitable, Tourism Minister Michael Chan announced the government would accept all 18 recommendations from an advisory panel led by former Progressive Conservative leader John Tory.

“Ontarians had a fond memory of Ontario Place. As you are probably aware, in recent years Ontario Place kind of lost its glory. We have to revamp, we have to redo it, we have to rebuild it and we are going to build on the theme of having people in there,” Mr. Chan told reporters at Queen’s Park.

“People can go in there, perhaps enjoy a hotel or a restaurant, or enjoy shopping in there. At the same time, [be] able to learn something in there…. We are excited.”

The project, a public-private partnership, has a target completion date of 2017 — Canada’s 150th anniversary.

The goal is to turn Ontario Place into an “urban waterfront community,” Mr. Chan said, with certain portions dedicated to housing, retail, parkland and possibly an educational attraction similar to the Ontario Science Centre. Residential units will be the “economic driver,” he noted.

A concrete plan of how the revitalized Ontario Place will look has yet to materialize, but the government will initially spend $5.5-million on completing an environmental assessment and studying the infrastructure and soil — all necessary groundwork before the province can offer the land to businesses for redevelopment.

Ontario Place first opened its doors in 1971, and while about 3.3 million people visited the park annually in the 1980s, that number was down to 327,774 in 2010. Even free admission in 2011 was not enough to attract customers; the province shut down Ontario Place this summer to save $20-million, though the Molson Amphitheatre, marina and Atlantis Pavilion banquet hall stayed open.

Mr. Tory’s July report, commissioned to address the waning attendance and revenues, found Ontario Place had failed to keep pace with Toronto’s changing landscape. When the attraction was built, the waterfront featured little more than empty factories and warehouses. The growth in population has led to a greater need for leisure and recreation space, which Ontario Place could fill, the report said.